This is the tenth retail loan securitization for Ally Bank. According to the Moody's presale report on the deal, the early performance for the existing deals has been strong, which is an important consideration along with conducting a deal-by-deal comparison of collateral.

AmeriCredit Financial Services, Inc. also began marketing a $1 billion auto securitization deal. It's the third deal the issuer has brought to market this year with a senior/subordinate structure.

Analysts at Bank Of America Merrill Lynch expect new issue volumes of $65 billion in the auto ABS sector. the figure, explained analysts, is based on the forecast for higher vehicle sales for 2011.

BofAML's equity research team covering the U.S. auto sector has forecasted U.S. vehicle sales of 15 million units for 2011 and 15.5 million units for 2012, despite potential near term supply pressure from Japan. The bank's economics team forecasted vehicle sales of 13.4 million units in 2011 and 14.6 million in 2012.

"Although Ford and General Motors had more modest gains in market share, higher vehicle sales should be supportive of new issue volume of ABS sponsored by Ford Motor Credit and GM Financial (via AmeriCredit)," said analysts in the report. "Honda, Nissan and Toyota lost market share. The captive finance companies (including Ally Bank) have increasingly represented a greater portion of ABS issuance volume. We expect this trend to continue in 2011, as banks have continued to rely on deposits to fund their consumer lending businesses."

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